


Red Bicycle

by Clockwork_Sky (failsafe)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2007-10-26
Updated: 2010-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/Clockwork_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor decides to do something reckless to ease his conscience.</p><p>A Time Agent is given an assignment that may change the history and future of the Universe.</p><p>A teenage girl on a Council Estate in London is caught in the middle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Christmas Presents

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a ficathon but ended up a couple of chapters shy of completed when I was a junior in high school. This plot bunny was durable enough such that I still have how it was meant to end in my head and might do it should I ever take a notion again, but I actually kind of liked it, even though I see flaws in it now.
> 
> It was originally beta'd by fancy_galloway [LJ] and my friend jedi_of_urth [LJ] also helped me with the plotting quite a lot at the time.

The Doctor couldn't remember the last time he had seen Rose Tyler's face but it might as well have been centuries for the way it felt. He had been considering buying a noseless puppy from Barcelona to dull the ringing in his ears caused by the relative silence onboard the TARDIS…

~~~~~

_Yesterday_

When he had reached the planet he felt the balmy air blowing around him. He could smell the lily-blanketed ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. Most of the buildings were orange and vaguely Spanish in appearance. Not that anyone on the planet had ever heard of Spain or their planet's Earthly namesake. In fact, nearly none of them knew of Earth. Barcelonans were not terribly keen on scientific development, taking most of their technology from nearby planets in exchange for the many exotic fruits and fragrance oils the planet produced. Deep space exploration was the last on the list of the average Barcelonan's priorities.

Along a street, shop vendors bustled about among throngs of middle class citizens. Each one trying to finagle the highest price for their goods while maintaining a kind of ridiculous pleasantness that in the Doctor's current frame of mind he found grating, but usefully distracting. One man, who looked humanoid except for the high positioning of his slightly pointed ears, his rounded nose, and the bluish tint to his otherwise pale skin, waved his hand at the Doctor for attention as he tried to walk past, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his long brown overcoat. He spoke to the Doctor in the rolling language of the Barcelonans.

"Oi, there, sir! You look like a man who could use some of my fine goods!" His voice lowered to a whisper that only the Doctor could hear, "Don't let these other conmen and village wenches fool you, kind sir. They try to rob you for materials sewn by the peasantry of Barcelona's filthiest slums. I can offer you clothes, sheets, curtains, finery of all kind, spun on the wheels and sewn on the very looms in Her Lady of Barcelona's Palace! …for half price."

The Doctor smiled, half friendly, half condescendingly. "Thank you, but… aren't the Lady of Barcelona's looms generally reserved for the time approaching the anniversary of Her Majesty's Coronation? Further, the only time the goods made there are available to the public for purchase is at the Coronation Feast which is not for a further two months."

The months on the planet Barcelona were 93 days long, each day lasting twenty-two hours and the years 1095 days. This was one of the reasons that the culture on Barcelona was so centered on entertainment and leisure, and was one of the many reasons tourists, gullible tourists, frequented the planet. The weather was very rarely cold or damp and the plants were full and green because of such a long growing season. Still, it was another reason Barcelona depended so heavily on its importing business and its markets. It was very difficult to grow edible food to match the rate of consumption by the planet's citizenry because the plants themselves seemed to have taken upon themselves whimsical attitude that was pervading in the society: that nothing needed to be done in any real hurry; a simple fruit tree took two Barcelonan months to bear.

"Eh…" the shop vendor replied dumbly.

"'Good day," the Doctor continued curtly with another winning smile, and turned to continue to walk a bit aimlessly through the market.

 

A few vending booths down on the other side of the street the Doctor saw something that caught his attention. Something shiny- when his eyes focused he realized that it was blonde hair. Shiny blonde hair, long and belonging to a petite woman who had bent down to pick up the lost toy of a small child who was screaming with the greatest displeasure his tiny lungs could muster. When she gave the red and blue painted widget he calmed down and cooed with delight as his hands struggled but managed to hold the thing much more carefully this time. The woman paused to rub her fingers over the child's nearly bald head and the baby squealed and put all four fingers of one hand in his mouth as a response.

The woman's booth was spread over a larger space than some of the others but it was much sparser. She had a little tent, supported by four high wooden stakes. From pole to pole there was a low, chicken wire fence that was rigged all except for on one corner and halfway across at the front, the result of which was that beneath her shelter all but a small space for any patron to stand was enclosed.

When the baby was appeased the woman went back behind a makeshift counter and continued sewing something intently, occasionally stopping to rearrange some children's clothing which seemed to be most of what she had for sale. Among the clothes that hung on a line above her head and among the folded ones on a shelf behind her there were little bits of beaded jewelry and toys that were colourful but obviously not worth their weight in gold… or any form of currency for that matter.

Still, the woman seemed happy. Happy to be doing her day's work and happy to look at the baby each time it raised its high, melodic voice in glee. The baby wore a one piece dull yellow outfit that was perhaps practical for a baby but was nowhere near as elaborate as the woman, presumably his mother, was sewing. The woman herself had dark cloth boots that just showed beneath a long, flowing but simple, faded red skirt and a dark blue blouse. Her blonde hair hung down to her waist and was tucked simply behind her ears; ears that were too low for a Barcelonan. Their positioning was quite similar to that of the Doctor's own ears.

 

While he was watching the woman he was actually trying to see her, trying to stop seeing only dim reflections of Rose superimposing over every thought. As the woman tended to her baby with a simple and obvious happiness the Doctor kept hearing Rose's laughter in his head. He remembered a conversation he'd had with Rose when they had visited the 2012 Olympics in London about the young Chloe Webber. He found himself wondering, now more than ever as he watched the young mother, if Rose would be a good mother- wondering if she would ever have children. For the moment he felt an odd, almost burning sensation that he wouldn't even allow himself to identify, that he'd also felt for the split second he had thought Rose was pregnant during the last conversation he'd had with her. Something about the idea of her having a normal life pained him. He knew it wasn't fair and a more sensible part of him wanted just that for her.

The Doctor's contemplation of the simple picture before him was somewhat interrupted when a little girl whose ears were also too low to be a Barcelonan's but whose hair was not blonde, but rather very deep brown ran to the woman, carrying a small, white, noseless puppy as carefully as she could with one little arm. "Mummy, Mummy!" she called insistently while grabbing her mother's skirt about the waist and tugging it with her free hand. "Mummy!" she called again even as her mother opened her mouth to speak with a smile on her face.

"Yes? What have you got there?"

"A puppy!" the little girl replied proudly as she set the little dog down, safe in the confines of the make-shift pin.

"Whose is he?"

"It's a she," the little girl explained, not being able to hide the excitement in her voice nor in the way she jumped about as if she were about to burst if she didn't move. "And she's a stray. She doesn't have any family, not anybody. Can we keep her, Mummy? Can we?"

The woman looked away and bit her lip and with that the Doctor slowly felt compelled to approach, fingering the Barcelonan credits he had actually thought to bring along just in case. No point going shopping to distract yourself if you haven't got any money.

"I'm sor-…" she began, looking down at her daughter's eyes sadly, only to be interrupted by the Doctor.

"'Morning, madam! Tell me, is that dog for sale?" he asked brightly, a smile on his face though the woman was not aware of the reason. The Doctor gave the little girl a passing, compassionate look, but her mother didn't see.

The woman eyed him a bit suspiciously, partially because he had startled her; slowly her look softened. "Yes, sir."

"Mum!" the little girl cried with the utmost in verbal agony. "No! She's mine. The man will eat her!"

The Doctor actually laughed at the idea in spite of himself as the little girl protested but put his hand over his mouth to disguise it as a bit of a cough.

"Annaleise," the woman hissed with a bit of a scolding look.

"But-…" the little girl began as her lower lip began to shake and her eyes began to well with tears.

"Excuse me a moment, sir." With that the woman turned and knelt a bit, her hands on her daughter's shoulders. "Annaleise," she whispered, "We've got to sell it. You said it didn't have a home… not anyone?"

The little girl nodded, trying her best not to cry with a stubbornness that made her little back arch slightly as she stood up as straight as she could. "But now she's got me… I won't leave her alone."

The words from the little girl's lips made the ringing in the Doctor's ears even louder, reverberating, only he wasn't even hearing Annaleise's voice.

"But you won't be leaving her alone, Ann. She'll have this nice man and we'll have each other." The young mother's voice lowered even more, as if in shame, "We need the money, Anna…"

The little girl nodded with more understanding than she should have at her age, a kind of jaded wisdom. She nodded curtly, walked over and dutifully hoisted the puppy and brought it to her mother. She gave it a final affectionate squeeze before relinquishing her grasp. The puppy yipped excitedly and whined a bit, completely confused.

"How much?" The Doctor asked, reaching down into his pocket.

"Anything you can give, sir," the woman whispered earnestly, gently soothing the puppy by stroking its back as she set it down on her counter. "Business has been slow today and I've got to buy something for them to eat before dark."

The Doctor gave her all he had in his pocket; an entire month's wages for a shopkeeper on Barcelona. Just a handful of shiny coins, but they went a long way.

"But… sir…" The woman's eyes said the rest for her as she tentatively touched one of the coins and then looked up into the Doctor's eyes. Hers were bright blue.

"You said anything I could, that's what I can," he replied with another smile.

The woman started to protest but the Doctor shook his head once at her and gestured toward her children with her eyes.

"Thank you, sir," she said and reached out and touched his hand that was still just on the edge of the counter. Then she gently nudged the puppy over to him so he could pick it up and as he began to pick it up she took his hand again with a bit more force, causing him pause. "You won't hurt it, will you?"

The Doctor replied in his sincerest tone, "Of course not."

Going just outside the booth he turned around on his heels and smiled, catching Annaleise's eyes and her attention. Seeing that Annaleise's blue dress was obviously of her mother's craftsmanship but that it only had three beads. One of them was in the middle of a bow on the center of the collar and the other two at the end of two strings that helped the dress hold its shape that were tied together in the back. The Doctor looked up at the intricate beadwork that decorated all the other little girl's dresses that hung on the line. This woman would not be able to keep the dog by her own means and would sell it gladly for her children.

"You know," he began as he turned back around and then kneeled before the tent at the edge of the little fence. "You know- Anna- was it? - I think this dog's a bit too young for me. What do you think?"

The little girl approached cautiously and her mother looked on even more so.

"It's just a baby," Annaleise replied earnestly as if she were explaining some very important fact of life to the strange but friendly man before her.

"Well," the Doctor said, speaking softly to the little girl, "I think maybe this puppy might like to hang round someone more its own age. So, I tell you what… maybe you could take care of it for me?"

Her mother took a step forward and started to speak but before the sound formed into a word the Doctor looked up at her and winked with a smile.

"But, sir," Annaleise replied with a sad tone, "…the puppy's yours now."

"Yes. Yes it is. But I think if it's mine I ought to look out for all its best interests, right?"

The mother laughed a bit, pressing her fingers to her lips as she watched.

"In-ter-refs?" Annaleise asked with a slight cock of her head.

"Interests. I ought to make sure my puppy has what's best for it for the rest of its life."

"Yes," Anna replied with more conviction now.

"Well, I think my puppy would be happier if I let her stay here with you and your family. I'm… on my own…," his own words caused him pause and for a moment he broke eye contact with Annaleise and his shoulders dropped just a bit as he looked at some indistinct spot on the ground just to the side of the little girl. Quickly snapping back to himself he caught the little girl's eyes and again and once again took upon a jovial, engaging demeanor, "…and a little puppy that used to have so many brothers and sisters would be much happier, I think, with a family like yours. And if my puppy is happy then I'll be happy… even if my little dog isn't with me." With that he gently gave the dog into the little girl's arms and she laughed with delight.

"Mummy, can I?" she asked. "Can I take care of the nice man's puppy?"

"Just a minute, Anna," the woman replied with a soft laugh in her own voice, pleased by the happiness on her daughter's face. "Sir?" she asked with a gesture of her eyes and head to draw the Doctor back to her counter.

"Sir, that's very kind of you… but, I can't let you leave with nothing for all this money. I really shouldn't be taking this much money from you at all… for anything. And I wouldn't if they," she nodded to her children, "…didn't need it so badly."

"They're yours?" he asked, the look in his eyes conveying concern rather than nosiness.

"Yes, they're mine." A smile nearly as wide as her face seemed to colour her very spirit as she looked at the baby in the highchair and her little girl playing with the noseless puppy as it nipped at her gently. Her smile faded a little and she looked back at the Doctor, speaking in an even quieter voice, "They're all I have."

"No other family?"

"No. My parents are long at rest and their father…" She paused and turned away; going to straighten some of the newly completed dressed that hung to the side so the Doctor wouldn't see her eyes redden. "…he died. War took him. I was pregnant with the baby when," she paused for a moment to look at her son who was happily playing with his toy, "…he never saw his son. That's why I brought them here. War never touches this soil… I've tried to protect them from that life. But… sometimes I think Annaleise remembers…"

"I'm sorry."

The woman smiled and sniffled at the same time, her demeanor having changed from being generally happy to seeming rather defensive. "No one can be sorry until they've lived it."

"I have," the Doctor replied simply, a bit coolly but sincerely.

The woman's shoulders dropped a bit and she looked at him from her work. "You lost someone?"

"Everyone," he said cryptically without leaving any room for further questions. "But Barcelona hasn't been at war for years. They're pacifists… barter their way out of every argument, never leaving any room from confrontation. But then, you're no Barcelonan, are you?"

The woman looked him squarely in the eye again as she replaced a dress on the line. "Human," she said. "And yourself?"

The Doctor smiled a bit wryly. "Not."

"Why did you buy that puppy?" she asked.

"A present," the Doctor replied after a pause. It was a way of diverting any further questions about what had brought him there but was true as well. He had been trying to buy a present- a way to escape the past that wouldn't leave him alone- or rather had.

"Oh, well I most certainly can't let you give it back to us, then. I can't let you get away with nothing."

"Tell you what- wait, what was your name?"

"Rosalind."

Again the Doctor looked at her, her blonde hair, her bright eyes, and he really didn't see her… Instead he, for a moment, only saw Rose, heard her voice, her laughter, her tears… everything came rushing back as it had so often in the last few days no matter how he tried to stop it.

Rosalind went on and pointed at the baby in the high chair, "…he's Ramsey and she's Annaleise."

"L-Lovely names," the Doctor replied, once again broken from a world of mirrors he couldn't seem to escape for long.

Rosalind's cheeks coloured slightly. "Thank you."

"Well, as I was saying, Rosalind, you just give me that necklace-…" he gestured toward the cheapest-looking of the beaded necklaces, "…and we'll call it even?"

"Sir, that's not-…"

"Come on, I could just walk away. You don't want money for nothing?"

Her brow furrowed a bit, not knowing quite how to take that but she couldn't hold back a little smile for long. "No, sir, I don't."

"Didn't think so," he replied and put the necklace gently down in his pocket and turned to walk away. "Thank you, Rose…," he cleared his throat and a bit lethargically cleared his throat and corrected himself, "Rosalind. Have a nice day." Then he started to walk out of the market, back toward the TARDIS.

"Sir!" Rosalind called as he got about four yards away. "I want to thank you; you've done so much but… I don't even know your name."

He stopped and turned to look at her and her happy little, broken family once again with a bit of a broken smile. "Just the Doctor. And you're welcome." And with that he walked away, never to see Rosalind, Annaleise and Ramsey again, his last memory of them being the sound of Annaleise's laughter and the puppy's high pitched yip.

~~~~~

He had returned to the TARDIS without a puppy and was even more reminded of the pain he was trying to forget. He wasn't sure why he'd thought a puppy would help- he hated loud, messy animals. Really the idea of a puppy being a solution to a problem sounded much more like an idea that Rose would come up with than one coming from his own mind. The silence was excruciating at times, but what was worse than the silence was the feeling he sometimes got that every word she'd ever said reverberated off the walls.

The Doctor remembered what Blon Fel Fotch Passameer-Day-Slitheen had told him once. Maybe he was, at times, one to run away daring not to look back. It panged his conscience every time he tried to push something about Rose out of his mind, every time he tried for a moment to move on. Always moving on, he used to say, but not anymore, because no matter how far he tried to run the closer he got… the closer back to that impassible wall between worlds.

When his logical side took over he tried to plot some plan of action, some course that would lead him back to himself. Lead him out of the dark tumult of emotions that were far too human for the logical side of him to understand, let alone abide. He couldn't stand just sitting still- he had to be moving, but now there was nowhere to go.

For days he'd tried to avoid looking at the railing around the TARDIS's console but the harder he tried not to the more he seemed to gaze upon the purple and blue glint of fabric from a shirt. A shirt Rose had haphazardly tossed there when they had made a stop on the arctic planet and she ran back onboard to change into a sweater. He'd always promised Jackie he'd bring her back but this time he often desperately wished he hadn't.

When given the choice he'd always tried to do the right thing. He had tried to protect the one person who had meant everything- the one person who, though he tried to make no distinction, had always been the most important. He'd tried to ensure her safety, tried to keep his promise to Jacqueline Tyler with no reservation; had Rose only possessed the capacity to really listen to him she would have been trapped but safe with her family and the Doctor would have missed her, but maybe then it wouldn't have hurt so much every time he thought about it. There would have been closure; he would have had the consolation of having done the right thing. But Rose Tyler was nothing if not stubborn.

She had come back through the gap, literally tearing through the Universe to get back to him- to leave her family for him. Before that he had known she loved him but until that moment he never even allowed himself to imagine how much. Now her words haunted him as they were her final testament to the life she had led on her proper 'version' of Earth. After all of it she was willing to leave, forever, both her life and her family for him.

"I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never going to leave you."

She'd refused to do the logical thing, the reasonable thing, and had nearly paid with her life. It seemed that fate, whatever that really was, had intervened and not allowed her… them… to have what they'd both fought for in the end. Maybe there was something to fate… maybe this was how things were supposed to be. Rose was with Jackie. Rose was safe. But if this was how things were meant to be then why did they feel so wrong?

He had to let go of this. How could he expect her to if he couldn't do the same? But there was something very lacking in this. Something everything, including Rose, had denied him: closure. He had done the best he could to give it to her but he had no way of knowing if she was suffering in the same way he was.

After a few more moments of deep thought, pressing his hands together at the palms and fingers and then pressing both his forefingers against the center of his lips he pulled the necklace he had bought on Barcelona from his pocket and remembered his conversation with Rosalind.__

_ "Why did you buy that…?" _

_ "A present."   
_  
It was a silly idea really and he hadn't meant it. A person couldn't buy themselves a present anymore than they could buy themselves a future. He hadn't really meant it though whimsically he wished it was possible- to buy a way to move on. Maybe you could; after all he never had been too clear on money, he thought with an odd smile against his fingertips. Rosalind, of course, had thought that he meant he was buying a gift for someone. But to buy a gift you have to know someone worth giving it to… That hadn't occurred many times in his life, only once in recent memory, but it had happened… __

_ "Look at you, beaming away like you're Father Christmas." _

_ "Who says I'm not? Red bicycle when you were twelve."   
_  
He suddenly found himself bolting from his chair and turning the knobs and dials on the TARDIS's console and a familiar whooshing sound emanated from her. The sound didn't seem to ring quite so emptily now… it was suddenly filled with purpose now. The Doctor smiled but there was sadness behind it.

This was a really bad idea…


	2. Breaking the Rules

**Chapter Two: Breaking the Rules**

 

The Doctor found himself turning every knob and widget, rushing about and haphazardly kicking things and hitting them with a familiar sledge hammer with practiced accuracy. It was much easier when he had someone to hold certain levers that had a nasty habit of popping back up at the most inopportune times, he had found. He didn't allow himself to think through what he was doing- he knew himself well enough to know that if he did that he would stop himself. He was functioning at this point on pure emotion, pure human emotion: a need for closure.

What he was planning to do was extremely dangerous in the best of circumstances. It was the very thing that his people had purposed themselves to stop. He was breaking one of the most fundamental laws of time travel; he was crossing someone's personal time line and no one was meant to do that. He had done it once before, but in Reinette's case it was damage control, not a decision he had made on his own.

He was planning to go back and see Rose with the bicycle he had given her. He wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't even allow himself to be seen, but he had to see her happy again if only for a moment. She had tried so very hard the last time he had seen her to hold herself together but if there was anyone in the entire Universe, in any Universe, that the Doctor- the cold and calloused Time Lord as he was sometimes perceived- could empathize with it was Rose Tyler. Even the mental connection he had once shared with every single other member of his race was not that strong. He often thought it was Rose's doing, that though her mental abilities had human limitations that she had willingly established a connection with him, a connection that could not easily be broken. She had freely given what he'd shared with his race by birth. With the other Time Lords gone Rose had been his family, the only vestige of an identity beyond himself that remained anywhere. Because of this he had felt, through the walls of time and space and even of reality, the overwhelming sadness, the overwhelming sense of loss that Rose had felt. Above all else he'd felt her. He hadn't escaped it since, really.

He knew Rose would eventually be all right; because even through the greatest pain and the greatest fear he knew that Rose was nothing if not strong. In spite of her occasional displays of immaturity there were certain ways in which she was the strongest human he had ever known. So in a way he was doing this for her, trying to find some of that strength within him. He had lost so many people but never before had he experienced the inability to move on. Even after losing his entire race he was able to move on, to live his life, to do what had to be done. But now she was never far from his mind and he couldn't shake it. He just couldn't let go. He knew he couldn't go on living like this and some insane little part of him kept screaming that this was the only way. And that was why the Doctor was deliberately and calculatedly breaking the rules…

_Saturday - 25 April 1998 _

_Bucknall House, the Powell Estate _

_South-east London, England, Earth _

 

Clouds hung over London that afternoon. It had rained earlier, but the city heat only left a damp coating on the pavement and no sooner had the clouds cleared but they rolled in again. The dreary weather was nothing unusual, but somehow it seemed different today. Still, Rose Tyler was determined it was going to do nothing to dampen her mood.

It was nearly her birthday and Shareen's mum had come to visit Jackie and get her hair done. For a while Shareen and Rose had lingered in the kitchen with their mothers. Rose had come to the conclusion that the only reason Shareen's mum ever bothered with her hair was to complain about her latest relationship that had fallen through. She went through more men than Jackie did. Rose and Shareen eventually wandered to her room where they listened to a Spice Girls tape that Rose had received from Cousin Mo as an early birthday gift.

The radio drowned out into empty background noise as she looked through her window up at the clouds. They were grey and backlit by the sun and were so bright and thick that it looked like the sky just ended. For the moment London was all there was.

Down below, Shareen's little brother sat on his hands and knees, laboriously working on a chalk drawing. Daniel was quiet and small for his age. It hadn't been very long ago that he'd been on his mother's hip, but lately he had taken to learning to read and draw all on his own.

Rose looked up with a start when she felt Shareen's hand on her shoulder.

"What are you looking so miserable for?" Shareen asked, wrapping a strand of her black hair around her finger.

"I'm not," Rose replied dismissively. She looked down at Daniel one more time and pulled her gaze away from the window and sat down on the bed.

"What is it?"

Rose laughed. "Nothing."

"Come on, now. Out with it."

"You're just like your mum..."

"Shut up. Now tell me."

"I don't know what you're going on about. I'm fine."

"It's Mickey, isn't it?"

"What?" Rose asked incredulously.

"You know he likes you. And I see him come round here after school..."

"I don't care. He comes for his gran. Mum keeps an eye on her."

"'Course you care," Shareen teased. "He's got a car."

"You're as bad as Mum."

"Really, though..."

"Really, though. Mickey's fine, but he's just Mickey."

"Whatever," Shareen replied with a shrug, already resigned to her opinion.

"Shareen, come here," Shareen's mother called.

Shareen sighed and nodded for Rose to follow her.

When their footsteps could be heard in the kitchen Shareen's mum continued, "Take something and see that Daniel wipes his hands. We've got to go soon."

 

Rose followed Shareen down the outside steps, stopping briefly to admire the red glint of her bike which was chained behind the stairs, which had been left on her front door this past Christmas without and explanation, just a large bow.

When she walked over to them Shareen was already methodically wiping streaks of blue, yellow, orange, and red from her little brother's hands. Rose smiled down at the little boy and wiped a stray mark of yellow from just above his eyebrow.

"What did you draw?" she asked, looking just behind him. Lines of chalk spread out in a shape that looked something like a flame.

"A bad wolf," Daniel said with a proud sort of growl in his voice.

It was just a child's drawing, but something about the wolf that Rose only just now saw in the middle of something that looked like a flame but wasn't a flame gave her a chill and she could have sworn the wind got a little colder. She pushed her hair behind her ears against the wind and looked the chalk scribbles up and down intensely. In the wind she heard something, something that made her glance up, something faint that rose just above the wind with a gentle whooshing that faded as soon as it came, almost like it was ripped away.

"What did you draw that for?" she asked, her gaze falling on Daniel again.

Shareen touched Rose's shoulder and gently shook her with a laugh. "What's the matter with you?"

"Time to go!" came her mother's voice and she took Daniel by the hand again.

"I just drew it," Daniel insisted, suddenly feeling very guilty.

"Really, it's all right," Rose said as brightly as she could.

Daniel looked at her for a moment and when he was reasonably satisfied that she wasn't upset with him he allowed Shareen to lead him away.

Rose just stood still, holding her hair back to have another look at the drawing. "Just feels like it shouldn't be here..."

 

That night it rained again and the chalk faded away into faintly coloured puddles. Four years later, Rose Tyler didn't remember Daniel's drawing at all...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Doctor kicked a panel and yanked another lever as the TARDIS groaned as she fell off course just a bit-- something was pulling her the wrong way. The light that emanated from the console flickered weakly and for just a moment winked out completely. It came back on quickly and with one final, laboured grinding sound everything was still. Everything was quiet. The TARDIS had stopped, but where?

When the Doctor stepped outside the familiar, creaking blue door, looking left and right, he frowned. The location seemed right- exactly where he'd wanted it- but he knew something was off. It looked like the Powell Estate, and it certainly smelled like it: motor oil, pizza, and cigarettes. It was growing dusk and lights and the blue flicker of television screens came on all over London. Silly, little, ordinary people living their silly, little, ordinary lives, together, alone, living in the center of the world and in the middle of nowhere. The Doctor wandered up to a trashcan and picked up a newspaper which hadn't even been properly unfolded and began scanning for a date. The first thing he noticed was the year. He wasn't too far off-- 2002.

"February 9," he murmured and dropped the paper back down to its resting place. "Explains the cold," he said to himself, shrugging his long, brown coat just a little tighter.

Not a mile away, tonight Rose as tapping a pencil eraser idly against a maths assignment that was three-fourths finished but showed no sign of being completed any time soon as she stared blankly at the telly, her chin in her hand and pinky at the corner of her mouth.

Mickey laughed when he looked up from the match, watching the images on the screen reflect off Rose's eyes and seem to bounce right off. He tapped her paper gently and she looked over at him with a bit of a start.

"You're not gonna finish that are you?"

"Nope," Rose replied as she gave the few lines of unfinished equations a final, resolute glance and pushed the paper and the book beneath it off her lap with contempt.

"You'll never become a nuclear physicist like that," he chided with a laugh.

She cracked a smile and laughed softly after a moment. "I just hate it," she explained. "I don't--"

"Here, Mickey," Jackie began as she came from the kitchen carrying a plate covered with tin foil. "Take these to your Gran for her tea."

"Sure this, Mrs. Tyler," he said automatically, glancing up at her and taking the plate. "Y'know Rose, I would offer to help. It's just..."

"No, no," Rose said, patting his upper arm. "It's fine."

"I had better go," he said as he felt the warm plate against his thighs and thought of the cold outside. It was getting late for his Gran.

"Night," Rose said before he leaned in and lightly kissed her before he stood up.

Jackie rolled her eyes as she folded some laundry but otherwise didn't bother saying anything.

"Thanks, Jackie," Mickey said as she stopped just before he left, raising the plate a little.

"You don't forget to tell your Gran to call if she needs anything."

"I won't. Bye, Rose."

"Bye," she said and watched him as he turned to go and nearly tripped over something, correcting the plate just enough to keep it from crashing to the floor. She couldn't stop herself laughing.

"Hey, shut up," he said on his way out with a weak smile and a bruised ego.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Doctor kept to the shadows along the familiar path to the Bucknall House. There were cars that had been wrecked or sold before the first time he'd stropped down the path for the first time as a different man, such a long time ago now. It hadn't even happened yet. Not for her.

He looked ahead when he heard footsteps approaching long before any human would. He stepped a little further into the darkness inconspicuously. It wasn't that the Estate held any fear for him, but he preferred not to be seen. He had had one too many experiences with paradoxes and while his very presence there spoke otherwise he wasn't taking any chances.

When the steps drew nearer the Doctor heard something between humming and singing and was immediately glad he had thought better than to continue on walking. The voice was familiar, only a bit younger, and belonged to one Mickey Smith.

The Doctor often thought about Rose. In a way, he thought about her all the time. He didn't think about the others very often, though. "Rose and her family" was something he had repeated in his head over and over like a mantra as a vain attempt to convince himself that Rose wasn't as alone as he was. Still, as Mickey approached he couldn't stop himself thinking of Mickey when he'd known him. He may have been the source of many a headache but he still seemed to have found his feet.

Remembering was different for a Time Lord. The Doctor not only remembered what had happened in the past but also what could have happened. When Mickey walked into the Doctor's view he could even see what might yet happen in Mickey's young life. The established time line kept trying to assert itself, but with the slightest focus of his mind the Doctor could see flickers and flashes of a life not yet lived. A life that never would be lived in this world... Well, barring any paradoxical catastrophe. Being able to see what might have been, what might yet be until suddenly it wasn't anymore, was its own gift- its own curse.

 

Mickey pulled a toboggan further down to the top of his ears against the cold. He walked along, careful to hold the plate level while keeping habitual close account of the road around him. It always was the winter when his latest acquisition from his job at the garage decided to give its last sputtering effort to turn the engine. He thought he heard something as he rounded the corner. A little scraping of metal that seemed just slightly out of place. He stopped just feet from where the Doctor stood imperceptibly in the darkness and tried to discern where the noise had come from. Now everything seemed quiet-- too quiet. The Estate was never without the sound of a distant argument or a dog barking, but when Mickey looked ahead, to either side, and behind, all the background noise faded like it was at the far end of a tunnel. For a brief moment it seemed as if the entire world was through twenty feet of water and as soon as sound and time seemed to come roaring back, Mickey had the distinct impression that he needed to be anywhere but there. He pulled the plate a bit tighter against his chest and set off at a jog toward his Gran's apartment without looking back.

 

The Doctor exhaled and stepped forward and pushed his hands into his coat pockets, sparing the direction in which Mickey had fled a glance. Humans were remarkable. Even they had a sense of avoiding paradoxes so long as they didn't think about it too much.

He turned again toward the Bucknall House and looked up at the sky. Tendrils of what looked like smoke but wasn't quite smoke wafted about tin the sky above. London fog-- it was something the Doctor had seen in nearly every stage of its development, and though it blocked the stars on its worst nights, it gave the city a mystical quality. Through the pollution and dust and clouds it seemed like a world of dreams at night. Here was the place he could believe everything and nothing. He could believe anything, and for a moment it felt just like any other time he had walked to the House and turned up to the steps and gone to Jackie Tyler's door.

The absence of the small, warm, human hand in his was the only reminder that kept his feet from crossing the path to meet a blonde, track-suited woman at her door. He smirked. Maybe he even missed her a little.

 

Rose sat on her bedroom floor, the soles of her feet pressed together as she bit her lip, pushing and rearranging the contents of her bag. When she'd finished she pushed it out of the way irreverently and stood up, leaning over her bed and fingering the switch on her alarm clock into the "On" position.

 

Outside, the Doctor finally came almost painfully close to the flat. He stood on the other side of the street, leaning his back eventually against the wall of the neighboring House. He found Rose's bedroom window. He just stared at it. He could see the door open on the inside, posters on her wall that made him want to laugh but there wasn't any laughter to come out. For the first time in a long while he felt like a child left out in the cold and he blamed no one but himself. As he watched he saw her pass in front of the window and he felt his chest expand. There was some thrill in seeing just the tiniest, momentary glimpse of her but soon there also came an immeasurable sadness crawling up his throat. He thought he might just have to run away... run away from the flat, run away from Rose, run away from his thoughts... but all thought of that faded for a moment when his eyes in spite of themselves fixated on what they saw next.

 

Rose stood up from leaning across her bed and walked over to her dresser and opened a drawer which contained, among other things, her pajamas. She pulled a white, cotton nightgown from the drawer and went back over to her bedside table and took off her earrings with the practiced movement of her fingers. She ran her fingers back through her hair from her forehead carelessly mussing her hair, rubbing her scalp a bit as she did, exhaling the day away, taking no heed of the fact that she was standing in front of her window and that with her light on anyone in the alley below could see her.

 

The moment the Doctor realized what his eyes were seeing his face coloured slightly, then paled, but as much as part of him screamed to run away he didn't.

 

Her fingers went down and just moved beneath the end of her shirt and found the button of her jeans and it came undone. Then came the zipper. Down it went. The Doctor couldn't see all that detail, the sensible part of his brain wouldn't allow it, but what he did see was her jeans slide down her hips, then down her legs and when they got to her knees she knelt a little to get them off then stood up with what would have seemed, if he hadn't known better, like an intentional cat like quality as she lazily stretched her arms above her head. His dual hearts started beating faster and faster until he became aware of his pulse in his ears and he swallowed and cleared his throat, attempting to retain some dignity even if his eyes had completely lost interest in dignity in favour of something entirely otherwise fascinating.

 

Rose's hands came back down from above her head and she stifled a yawn and she gripped her shirt from the very bottom, pulling it up from the waistband of her panties and then pulling it over her head, causing her hair to muss even more before falling back down round her face, and standing there she picked up the nightgown from the bedside table and shook it out from its folded position but before slipping it over her head she laid it back down and her hands went up to her shoulders, slipping the white bra straps down off them so they fell down before she slipped out of them. Her hands went behind her back and she turned around a little, looking behind at something. The Doctor tried to withhold the sigh of disappointment and it didn't stay long as he was able to see the bra, even from the back, fall to the floor as Rose just simply touched the clasp with a speed and accuracy that all but completely amazed the Doctor's somewhat hazy mind as his tongue went to his cold and now dry lips.

On went the nightgown and she turned round once more once she'd shaken it out from bunching and stopping its fall just round her hips and turned off her lamp and then the overhead light went out when she disappeared from the window and the Doctor was finally able to pry himself away, mentally trying to will his heart rate back down, his blood back into its usual circulation, and the goofy smile off his face. She was only sixteen years old....

 

Rose gathered her clothes in the dark from around the places they had fallen and pushed them into a hamper that was just by her window. She glanced outside and noticed a man walking down the alleyway off into the night. It wasn't odd by any means to see someone new wandering around the Estate but something about the stranger in the long brown coat seemed important. She shook the sleepy thought away and turned round and pulled the pink bedclothes down and slipped in bed and tried not to spare it a further thought.


	3. Orders From Above

**Chapter Three: Orders from Above**

 

The buzzing sound of the PA system crackling to life made everyone onboard the S.S. Bae Caerdydd stop and look up vaguely at the yellow-painted ceiling as if it was somehow related to their hearing the electronic voice's broadcast. Perfect soldier ants, each and every one of them, though they all laughed every time they happened to notice how well-trained they were.

"Attention all personnel. Attention all personnel," the tinny, female voice said. Then, it continued with a laugh and a vaguely affectionate lilt, "Boe. Wherever you are, stop flirting and report to the Central Office."

The Captain groaned under his breath. He was busy flirting and seemed to be doing a good job of it too. His present company was far more pleasant than anything in the Central Office could ever be.

"Duty calls," he said with a heavy exhale as he stood up, giving his new friend his most winning smile. When he'd walked almost to the exit of the mess hall he looked back with a brief regretful glance. This was one of the best jobs he could ask for but it always had managed to ruin at least half his fun.

 

When he got to the Central Office he pressed his thumb against a glowing pad next to the door and a line of bright, white light ran down through the field of blue, registering his thumb print and pulse. The scanner beeped and the door hissed as it slid back and Jack stepped through. Before him was a dark, mahogany coloured, wooden desk that looked ancient but ridiculously well-maintained.

"Boe," came the voice from the backward-turned office chair behind the desk, almost sounding sarcastic and biting. The way he said it was nothing like the friendly female voice over the comm. His voice sounded soft, clipped, and ingratiating and the Captain got the distinct feeling he wasn't going to like what he was about to be told.

He didn't- but a job was a job.

For a long time he stared at the paper folder that was spread open on Mr. Manger's desk and, finally, he exhaled heavily and lifted himself up by pressing on his knees.

"Further orders, sir? Do I have a cover, or just quick clean-up?"

"Avoid contact as much as possible," Mr. Manger eventually decided as he finally turned around fully in his desk-chair, tapping his fingers together thoughtfully. "Although," he added with a sly grin which at first seem directed at the file folder until he looked up, "...if asked a name perhaps you should supply one that isn't your own. The Twenty-first Century is when everything changes and you should be ready."

"Any suggestions?"

"Yes. Perhaps, Jack Harkness?"

The newly-dubbed Jack tried it on for size by standing up straighter and putting on as bright a smile as he could muster with his current assignment so fresh on his mind. It seemed to fit quite well, in fact, and he nodded with something like approval. "Right. When do I leave?"

 

Jack inspected the blue cloth pants with his fingertips- jeans; they were called- before looking at the rest of his equipment. He tried to avoid looking at one piece in particular until he had to pick it up to take it with him. The death penalty was anything but common in the 51st century, but almost all of them were carried out by the Time Agency, prior to a person's crime. The government liked to contract out. Still, he didn't know what crime for which this person deserved death, he didn't even know what she looked like, though he had been told it was a she. Shame, really.

Eventually he had to look at the gun. It was small, very small, and looked similar to an Old Earth handgun. The 'bullets' were actually made from a chemical compound that dissolved upon penetration into something warm- say a body- and were a form of fast sedation from which the victim never roused again. Still, that didn't make killing anymore appealing to Jack and he was trying to ignore the gnawing guilt that already was working its way up his yet-weak stomach.

He tapped his wrist device thoughtfully. The little thing did everything but tell time, which was odd since that's what Old Earth wrist devices did. The little device was keyed in to a kind of imprint that Mr. Manger had said that the convict- a human girl tried in her absence according to Mr. Manger- Jack's victim, would have. It would work like a metal detector, beeping when it got close to her or anything bearing her signature. Everything was electronic. Everything was clinical. Everything except pulling the trigger.

 

Sunlight began to tint the London sky when Jack dizzily materialized in the 21st century. He looked up at the slowly lightening sky from his position on his back on an alleyway. So much for clean clothes, he thought as he sat up, shaking his head slowly and rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. After a moment of sitting on the ground, he looked around and gathered his equipment, contained in a nondescript satchel. When he stood up he tried to get his bearings, reading the signs around him to try and work out where he was- to see if he was, indeed, in London and if the Vortex Manipulator had landed him in the right time period. It looked 21st century enough...

 

He pressed a button along the side of his wrist "watch" and read the readout and walked ahead, watching where he was going as best he could. Which is why he was surprised when he nearly ran face first into a tall, blue box.

~~~~~

The Doctor was staring at the monitor on the TARDIS console, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes as if it would somehow help him to understand what he was reading. The problem wasn't in his understanding, though. It was just that it was impossible. For whatever reason the TARDIS was still there, yes, but she wasn't working at all. There seemed to have been some huge disturbance in the flow of time, but it didn't make any sense. Neither Rose nor Mickey had actually seen him and he'd been to London a million times before, so what was it?

~~~~~

Jack took a long moment to look the blue box up and down with a kind of instinctive reverence and fear. There was something about it that seemed so shocking that it was sitting there- but it was just a blue box. The longer he looked at it the more he had a hard time concentrating on the feeling that it shouldn't be there, some little voice in his head whispering just below the surface, "Not yet."

He almost felt himself shiver as he reached out to touch the box but then pulled his hand back and cleared his throat. He shook himself and walked around the box and went on following the signal from his watch which had slightly changed direction.

When he'd slowly walked through the unfamiliar territory, using his military training to scan for any potential threats and his personal eye to scan for any nice bars, he finally came to a point at which his watch began to beep in an erratic way for a moment. When he looked up and read the letters above the door something in his chest and in his stomach sank.

**Jericho Street Comprehensive **

A high school, he was sent to "eliminate" someone from a high school. But even after the reality of that sank in something else felt like it was about to get even worse...


	4. Any Other Day

**Chapter Four: Any Other Day**

 

Rose tugged on her light blue tracksuit jacket and ran her fingers through her hair quickly as she looked in the mirror one last time before haphazardly gathering her bag and a stray book from her floor. She ran out her bedroom door and to the coffee table to grab her keys as quietly as she could. Her mum was still asleep and she didn't want to wake her. After she shut the door as quietly as she could she ran down the steps, nearly falling down them in her haste, and then went on at a near jog toward the school. 'Stupid, stupid, late, late,' she was mentally scolding herself. School was just getting to be too much...

 

Jack swallowed down his squeamishness for the moment and went about checking the school for all the exits as discreetly as he could, eyes trained on the building and memorizing everything about it. He was running his hand up and down the rear-entrance door thoughtfully, checking to see how secure it was. He was so engrossed in his work that it actually startled him when something or someone ran into him and a loud thud was heard against the pavement.

"Oh, sorry," came the simultaneous response from his own throat and the voice of the thing, the person, that had run into him. The first thing he noticed and catalogued was that the voice was female and something about it seemed familiar, like a shadow of someone he'd met a lifetime ago. That couldn't be right, though. He hadn't spent that much time in the 21st century and, as a general rule, he didn't start seeing who was available in the area until he at least understood their slang. It would be really embarrassing if you misunderstood something a person said during... well, never mind, he thought with the softest of chuckles to himself.

He looked to see what had made the noise and saw a thick, paper book and assumed that it must be a textbook. He looked up slowly and saw slightly dirty white Reeboks, the sequin-trimmed blue trousers that fit snugly around rather shapely human-female legs, and the white tee-shirt that came down just over the waist-band of them with a star across her chest that reflected like tin foil in the sunlight. After leisurely looking up he made eye contact with her, giving her his most charming smile as he repeated himself.

"Sorry," he said again. He bent down and retrieved the book from the ground and placed it back in her hands. He felt her eyes still following him as he did and saw that when he looked at her face again they readily trained on his. They were beautiful, dark hazel eyes, full of life, youth, curiosity- humanity. That was one of the reasons he loved his job. He got to meet all sorts of people, human or not, and each one of them had the (that) same lively tenacity somewhere beneath the surface; this girl was teeming with it.

"Thanks," came her eventual reply as she smiled at him, pressing her front teeth against her lower lip briefly. She pushed the book under her left arm and brought her right hand up and folded her hair behind her ear, not looking away but not saying anything for a moment.

"What's the hurry?" Jack asked, not entirely surprised that he had completely distracted her from whatever reason she had been running in the first place.

 

She watched his face for a moment longer as if a beautiful vase had just started a conversation and she wasn't quite sure how to respond.

 

"S-School," she murmured as she felt her right index finger point toward the door, which Jack was half-leaning against, then come back down to touch her lip briefly. She laughed at herself, he wasn't that good-looking and how old was he? The longer she looked, though, the more something inside her made her feel like he was very familiar but also like she wanted to start running again. She wanted to run away and stand there forever all at once.

 

Jack nodded and stepped away from the door and opened it, holding it ajar for her.

"Thanks," Rose said as she nearly walked inside but then poked her head back around the door. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Inspecting," Jack responded casually. He pulled out a tattered wallet and flipped it open and Rose read it and seemed satisfied.

"Right. Well, I'm already late," Rose continued with a nervous laugh as if she felt she needed his permission to leave.

Jack motioned with his hand for her to go inside and she did, turning around once more just over the threshold to look at "the Inspector's" piercing but warm blue eyes.

"I'm Rose, by the way," she said, not sure if she should but unable to stop herself.

"I'm Ja-" he began to say while reaching out his hand to shake hers but when he got closer his wrist device started beeping madly and he felt a cold, sick feeling settle in his stomach. It took him a moment to recover his thoughts but his hand never did make it to hers. "Actually, I'm really late too. I-I'll see you later."

"Wai-" Rose began as he turned away, but was quickly interrupted by the Headmaster's clipped but very loud reprimand.

"Miss Tyler," he said with something that bordered on absolute contempt. "Late again?"

 

Rose rolled her eyes before turning around to look at him but she also felt a certain amount of dread creep over her. She thought quickly, trying to come up with some reasonable excuse other than the charming yet too-old-for-her man by the door. A grin came across her face as she thought of him. Maybe he was just the excuse she needed- after all, he was there doing inspection which the Headmaster must know about.

"I was just talking to--" She stopped when she looked over her shoulder out the door which she still held open with her body.

"To whom, Miss Tyler?"

"To...to..."

"Well, I'm sure you can tell me at great length. After school today."

With that the Headmaster turned to leave and Rose just groaned and rolled her eyes again, tempted to kick the door but instead she just spared one more look around before she closed it. The Inspector was nowhere to be seen. He was just there and then gone like the little burst of cold wind that blew into the corridor as she shut the door.

 

She trudged down the hall, feeling more and more each day like she was walking into a dungeon. When she got to the Hall she wrapped her hand around the door and thought about not turning it. She sighed and with an unenthusiastic motion turned the handle and walked inside, spotting Shareen on the back row looking rather upset.

"What's wrong?" she whispered once she slipped quietly into the seat next to her and rubbed her forearm.

"Daniel's taken ill. He's gone to hospital."

"Hospital?" Rose asked in a loud whisper, careful not to rouse much attention.

"Yeah. He woke up screaming in the middle of the night with a fever. Kept saying something about the Big, Bad Wolf coming. He was out of it for a while, and they keep saying he'll be okay, but..." Shareen wiped a tear from beneath her eye and smiled halfheartedly as she looked at the liquid on her hand. "Dumb kid."

"He'll be all right," Rose cooed reassuringly, though she had trouble swallowing the lump in her throat.

"I know."

Rose grinned at her as they began dismissing the pupils to their classes. "So that's why you came to school today?"

"Shut up."

 

The final bell rang and Rose got up from her seat, tiredly shoving her homework into her bag. Ordinarily she would have been headed home or to the garage to sit on an oily bench and watch Mickey work. She went to the room where after-school detention was held and took her seat. The time went by quickly because she somehow managed to not think while she worked. Her mind wasn't there but was still trapped in that morning and in the eyes of the Inspector. Who was he? Why did something within her think she should know? Why was something deep in the pit of her stomach telling her to stay away?

"You're dismissed," Mrs. Pellington, looking over a book she was reading to speak to the handful of pupils in the classroom.

Rose gathered her things again and started to walk out the door.

"Rose," Mrs. Pellington said, seeming surprised to see her standing there. "What were you here for today?"

"Being late again," Rose replied with a tiny smile. At least Mrs. Pellington didn't hate her.

"Get to bed earlier," Mrs. Pellington said softly, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"It's the getting out part I don't do so well with," Rose sighed, deciding not to mention the particular set of circumstances this morning. The more time passed away from it the more she felt like it was something to be kept secret.

 

Rose went through the school and into the Hall to take the exit closest to the garage. She heard a door not far off open and close but she thought nothing of it. At least the rest of the day could be like any other...


	5. Everything Changes

**Chapter Five: Everything Changes**

The Doctor leaned the palms of his hands against the TARDIS console, rather bleakly considering what sort of job he could get on the Estate without unraveling the space-time continuum. He stood up slowly and pried his eyes off the monitor. There wasn't anything _that_ unusual that he could tell. Jack was present somewhere between here and Cardiff and that made any reading a bit off. For a moment the Doctor wondered if any reading would ever be right again because of the Captain.

 

As if to answer his question the monitor crackled into white snow and the TARDIS's health seemed to suddenly further decline. The Doctor always had had a fairly spot-on intuition and if Jack had anything to do with why the TARDIS was ill then the repercussions could be far worse than he had first thought. He grabbed his jacket and ran out of the TARDIS. If he was right, and he usually was, then he could lose both of them forever...

 

Jack's telltale heart was the only thing he could hear as he silently followed Rose. She had no idea he was there as she briskly walked out of the school and down the veins of alleyways that connected her little part of the world. She almost skipped along with a childish abandon for a moment, readjusting her bag so it wouldn't fall down into any of the standing water pooled on the street.

He reached down and hooked his finger into the trigger and gently fingered the cool metal of the gun, but he didn't aim it. He had a clear line of sight. No one was around. Still, he couldn't do it. What could this girl have possibly done-- what was she going to do, in fact-- that was so wrong that she had to die for it?

 

Rose rubbed just above her eyebrow with her fingertips as she went around the corner. She exhaled heavily as she walked saw the little sandwich board and the building behind it. It was so familiar now that she didn't really see it and could just barely smell the petrol that was spattered on the pavement. When she walked inside she reflexively found a spot on a work bench that was mostly devoid of any recent grease spills or other muck and flopped her bag down.

"Oi, Mickey," she said as she tapped her foot to a familiar pair of dirty sneakers that were just visible beneath a car.

She stepped back with practiced timing to keep him from rolling into her as he pulled himself from beneath the car with his knees. He sat up, stabilizing himself with his feet as he looked up at her from the ground. She stifled a laugh as he grinned at her; some kind of greasy dark smear on his face looking like poorly applied stage make-up.

 

"How was school?"

"Awful. I got detention again," Rose said as she looked down idly at her fingernails. She looked back up since they weren't particularly interesting. "Pellington hates me."

Mickey broke eye contact with her and went back beneath the car but continued talking, "What'd you do now?"

"I was late. I really should go home, but I came by because... Shareen's brother is in the hospital. You think we should go see him?"

Mickey rolled back out again and stood up.

"Yeah. What's he in the hospital for?" He walked over to a utility sink and began washing the muck from his hands and arms.

"I dunno. Shareen said he--"

Rose never finished her statement because something in the very bottom of her intuition told her to look up from where she had come. She looked up just in time to see the Inspector's face peeking around and her eyes met his.

Mickey noticed that she had stopped mid-sentence and tried to see what had stopped her. When he did he felt like his stomach was reeling with a kind of unearthly cold. He stepped in front of Rose, though he wasn't very well armed-- he just had a dirty towel.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked.

Rose looked just around Mickey nervously in time to see the Inspector step into clear view and pull a gun on them.

"Don't move," he said, but there seemed to be some doubt- a decided lack of conviction- in his voice.

She couldn't even register that she was looking down the barrel of a deadly weapon- she could only hear alarm bells ringing in her head that it shouldn't be there at all.

 

The Doctor ran full speed down the familiar arteries until his eyes rested upon a sight that thrust him into desperate urgency. He stopped cold when ten feet in front of him, across the garage's entrance, was something the Doctor at first couldn't bring himself to understand. Jack Harkness was standing with a gun trained on Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith. He tried to assess the situation, but his Time Lord nature wouldn't let him see anything but the future that was trying to exert itself.

The pulling of the trigger. Everything past, everything future, absolutely everything dissolving in a roar of sound. Everything he knew- no matter how much it hurt- coming down to nothing. Everything gone. Everything bleeding out in a sea of hot, quickly-cooling human blood.

If he'd even had time to think he may have been able to think of some better response. But he couldn't think- not about anything.

"Jack, don't you dare," came the firm command, spewing more from boiling blood and breaking hearts than mind.

Jack instinctively turned the gun toward the voice. He'd thought he'd had the situation under control, even though it was not the situation he'd wanted, but this man suddenly made him lose any delusion of that.

"Jack!" Rose said, pushing past Mickey without a thought as she saw the gun in line with the stranger's chest. "Just... put the gun down," she pleaded. Somehow she felt- she knew- that the appeal would work. Neither of the men felt like strangers, even though she _knew_ they should. It didn't make sense, but it didn't matter. All she wanted was both of them safe-- even though one of them had been holding a gun on her.

Jack replaced the gun in its holster and an ironic smile came across his lips. He felt himself instinctively preparing for some kind of fallout that never actually came.

Mickey nearly lunged toward him as soon as he heard the gun slip back into its place.

Rose grabbed his forearm and the other stranger's voice further deterred him.

"Don't, Mickey," the Doctor said in a calm, measured tone, his eyes never leaving Jack's now that he had them.

"How do you know my name?!" he demanded.

Part of the Doctor wanted to tell him. Wanted to tell her. But he couldn't-- not now. He glanced toward Rose and Mickey once with a pang of regret, but he wouldn't let his eyes linger. His attention had to be on Jack.

"Who do you work for?" he asked.

"What?" came all three replies.

"Jack, who do you work for?!" he asked. This didn't make any sense- why would Jack _ever_ want to hurt Rose? There was only one way he ever would...

Jack felt himself losing control of the situation. It was a feeling that seemed to run down his arms into his fingers and he felt them go cold. Any pretentious, cocky vestige of a smile left his face. His fingers clinched up into his palms and he felt them press inward with so much force that he almost thought they were the only thing that kept him standing there. He looked at the man before him. He looked at the girl. He couldn't really decide which he wanted to look at more, but he couldn't keep eye contact with either of them. He only knew that what he had tried to do was so very wrong that he couldn't even comprehend it.

"Who is it?!" the Doctor continued, his eyes ablaze as he advanced a single step toward Jack.

Rose knew she should take the opportunity to run. She knew she and Mickey should try to get away. Still, she just stood there, staring. Her hand went to her mouth and she almost bit her fingernail nervously but her feet didn't move to walk away even when she felt Mickey tug her hand. She barely even felt it; instead, she just stared at the man standing there in a pinstripe suit. There was something very different about him, and she got the same feeling that she had felt when she had met 'Jack' this morning: there was the impulse to run and hide but the greater impulse was to run to him- to try to soothe the anger that she saw burning from the very depths of who he was.

"Rose--" Mickey pleaded.

She just shushed him, waiting with bated breath for the dream world she found herself trapped in to shatter.

"I'm a Time Agent," Jack replied eventually.

"Oh, what kind of--" Mickey began and again advanced toward Jack. "You try to _kill_ her because--"

"Mickey, stop it," Rose insisted, putting herself between them and she boldly stepped forward, right between Jack and the Doctor, looking up and searching Jack's blue eyes.

"You were supposed to kill me?" she asked.

"Y-Yeah. Yeah, I was," he replied, finding it difficult to keep his eyes on hers. He looked over her head at the Doctor whose anger seemed to have dissipated as quickly as it had come.

"I didn't want to," he began to explain desperately, "I didn't even know who she was. They told me to come and find her with this." He gestured toward the thing that until now Rose had just assumed was a wristwatch.

"I know you didn't, Jack," the Doctor said, barely above a whisper.

"Really, I didn't. I'm sorry," he insisted. When he looked into Rose's eyes he felt like he had known her all his life- like he had loved her all his life- and he had just tried to kill her.

"I know," she said, her hand tentatively touching his forearm.

Mickey almost tried to pull her back away but as he looked at the three people before him he somehow understood that there was something he couldn't understand going on. He didn't have time to think about it before he felt wind begin to blow colder, whipping pieces of litter around and around a few feet beyond them in the street.

What began as a faint winter breeze began to howl against nothing and, in the center, the black shape of a dog- a wolf- began to materialize.

The Doctor, Rose, and Jack looked around at it, too.

It was a shadow at first, but it began to take a solid, cold, metallic shape. Green light pulsated along the sutures in the metal as it finally stood there, inhuman, backlit eyes glaring at them.

"You have failed me," came a voice, trembling with laughter- not from the mouth of the metal wolf but from a speaker on its upper back. It didn't seem to be from the 'animal' at all, and Jack knew that it wasn't.

"Run!" he shouted and desperately looked around, trying to decide which way to go.

"This way," the Doctor said as he instinctively, without a thought, grabbed Rose's hand and led them toward the TARDIS.

Mickey's foot caught on his baggy work clothes and he tripped, catching himself on one knee, as they began to run.

The wolf gained on him, singling him out mindlessly as the most vulnerable target, its computer brain ticking away with mechanized bloodlust. Its mouth whirred open almost silently, two fangs descending that ended in fine needle points. A quick burst of fluid expelled itself as the wolf almost salivated though it knew no hunger.

Rose felt everything happening at once. The stranger's hand wrapped around hers without a word. She was surprised at first and almost jerked it away but found her hand gripping instead of pulling away. His hand was cool to the touch at first but quickly its warmth went up her arm and she felt completely safe until she heard Mickey cry out as he fell. She looked back around her shoulder and stopped dead but didn't let go of the stranger's hand- not being able to move.

"Mickey!"

Mickey felt like he was in a dream, one of those dreams where you try your hardest to scream but nothing comes out. He felt his hands and feet scrambling to get up. He finally stood and felt like his knees might collapse again, but he ran from sheer force of adrenaline. He heard the electronic jaws snap closed with all the force of a guillotine where he had just been, but he dared not look back.

The Doctor was relieved to see Mickey start to run again, but now he had to get Rose to just move her feet. She was afraid, and understandably so. He remembered the first time he'd helped her run away and remembered the way she had looked back. He wondered if that would ever happen now.

"Rose," he begged.

"How do you know--" she said, her head whipping around to look at him.

"Never mind that," he assured her and pulled her along and again all four of them were running.

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief through his heavy panting when he saw the blue box.

Jack recognized it from that morning but this time it went deeper and he half expected what would be inside when he heard the key go in.

The four of them were seconds from protection behind the door when all four male hearts nearly stopped.

Rose screamed out in pain as the wolf's needles sank into her ankle.

Jack pulled out his gun and fired it at the nape of the wolf's neck, screaming with a boundless anger.

The dispelled blast bounced off the wolf, but the viscous computer let go, its fangs withdrawing to refill themselves as it ran back.

Rose exhaled sharply and sat down on the ground, her back against the TARDIS. She made a weak, breathy sound that sounded almost like a laugh as she grabbed her ankle, the tiny puncture wounds feeling huge and like nothing all at once.

"Get her inside," Jack said, his gun still trained in the direction the wolf had retreated, a memory that wasn't a memory showing him the way to the TARDIS's medical bay.

The Doctor scooped Rose up, her head lulling against his shoulder though her breathing remained steady as she slowly lapsed into unconsciousness.

Mickey's mind was reeling with guilt and fear and confusion but he followed, saying Rose's name over and over, sometimes out loud and sometimes in his mind.

The Doctor felt her body, warm against his, even smaller than he knew it to be and it seemed so frail now.

Rose again laughed, the pain was gone now and it didn't make any sense. She didn't know why she was laughing either. She felt the stranger pick her up and carry her inside the closet- no, it wasn't a closet- it was outside. He had carried her into a shed. It wasn't a shed- a room- a big room- many rooms. Her mind swirled around, disconnected thoughts seeming to be the best she could manage.

Jack backed gingerly inside, closing the door and turning around. He knew what would likely be in the robot's first injection- he only hoped he was right.

"You smell good," was the last thing Rose murmured under her breath before the final vestiges of her will to stay awake evaporated and she fell into a deep, calm, but unnatural sleep.


End file.
